Following up from July Delta Variant info…
Vaccine Efficacy
Vaccine efficacy may be lower than originally found:
Mayo Clinic found 42% efficacy against Delta… (preprint)
A possible counterpoint:
This article in @NEJM shows that 2 doses of the Pfizer vaccine is 94% effective against alpha and 88% effective against delta. AstraZeneca is 75% against alpha and 67% against delta. Any vaccine is 88% against alpha and 80% against delta. These are not huge reductions. pic.twitter.com/MJZfa7MX3D
— Dr. Angela Rasmussen (@angie_rasmussen) August 12, 2021
Breakthrough Cases
On breakthrough stats and why the Kaiser report may be underrepresenting the data (Kaiser breakthrough case data):
"The central distortion reflected in the Kaiser report — and echoed by communicators elsewhere, including in the Times — is the result of a basic error of comparison, one that should have been obvious to anyone familiar with the shape of the pandemic."
— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) August 12, 2021
Two thirds of 2021 cases and 80% of deaths came before April 1, when only 15% of the country was fully vaccinated. Calculating year-to-date ratios means possibly underestimating the prevalence of breakthrough cases by a factor of three and breakthrough deaths by a factor of five.
— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) August 12, 2021
But the piecemeal data does begin to tell you something, suggesting that breakthrough cases represent a bigger share of spread, particularly with Delta, than has been widely acknowledged—perhaps overall somewhere in the range of 5-20% of current cases, rather than the 0-5% range.
— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) August 12, 2021
But between June 25 and July 26, 6,973 Americans died from COVID-19, according to the CDC. Also according to the CDC, during that same period, 364 died of breakthrough infections. That’s more than 5 percent — more than six times Fauci’s estimate and ten times Murthy’s. (x/x)
— David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells) August 12, 2021
How the Pandemic Now Ends by Ed Yong
